Nobel Peace Prize serves anti-China purpose: Chinese daily

BEIJING -The Nobel Peace Prize has been “degraded to a political tool that serves an anti-China purpose” and is an attempt “to impose Western values on China”, an editorial in a Chinese daily said after a leading political dissident was awarded the prestigious prize.

The Global Times, an English language newspaper that targets expats and the outside world, said in an editorial Saturday that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, “an incarcerated Chinese”.

“The Nobel committee once again displayed its arrogance and prejudice against a country that has made the most remarkable economic and social progress in the past three decades.

“The Nobel Prize has been generally perceived as a prestigious award in China, but many Chinese feel the peace prize is loaded with Western ideology,” the editorial said.

Jailed Chinese dissident and writer Liu Xiaobo was unanimously chosen for his long-standing struggle for human rights in China. Liu authored Charter 08, a political manifesto similar to the Charter 77 of one-time Czech dissidents. He is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for inciting subversion of state power in China.

The editorial stated that in the last century the prize was awarded several times to “pro-West advocates in the former Soviet Union, including Mikhail Gorbachev, whose efforts directly led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Western preference of the Nobel committee did not disappear with the end of the Cold War”.

Continuing its scathing criticism, the newspaper said: “The (Norwegian Nobel) committee continues to deny China’s development by making paranoid choices.

“In 1989, the Dalai Lama, a separatist, won the prize. Liu Xiaobo, the new winner, wants to copy Western political systems in China.”

It went on to say that there were “many different perspectives to view these two people, but neither of the two are among those who made constructive contributions to China’s peace and growth in recent decades”.

Chinese “have (a) reason to question whether the Nobel Peace Prize has been degraded to a political tool that serves an anti-China purpose”.

“It seems that instead of peace and unity in China, the Nobel committee would like to see the country split by an ideological rift, or better yet, collapse like the Soviet Union.”

The newspaper warned that it was an attempt “to impose Western values on China…Obviously, the Nobel Peace Prize this year is meant to irritate China, but it will not succeed. On the contrary, the committee disgraced itself.”

“The Nobel committee made an unwise choice, but it and the political force it represents cannot dictate China’s future growth…China’s success story speaks louder than the Nobel Peace Prize.”